Russia’s Policy Shift Towards Taliban And Pakistan

SOURCE:http://www.eurasiareview.com/02032017-russias-policy-shift-towards-taliban-and-pakistan-analysis/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+eurasiareview%2FVsnE+%28Eurasia+Review%29

Russia’s Policy Shift Towards Taliban And Pakistan – Analysis

                             By 

            Manabhanjan Meher

                           IDSA 

Taliban fighters in Afghanistan. Source: Wikipedia Commons.

MARCH 2, 2017

For the second time in the last few months, Russia hosted a Conference on Afghanistan in Moscow on February 15, 2017, this time with an expanded representation of six countries – Russia itself, Iran, China, India, Afghanistan and Pakistan. 

Interestingly, a key player, the United States, which still maintains 9,800 troops to support the Afghan government’s counter-insurgency efforts against the Taliban, has been kept out of the meeting. But for its part, the US appears to be contemplating an increase in its military commitment, with its commander in Afghanistan, Gen. John Nicholson, advocating to the Senate Armed Services Committee recently that “a few thousand” more NATO trainers are needed to break the stalemate against the Taliban.1 India welcomed the Moscow meeting which brought together countries that have stakes in Afghanistan’s peace and security. However, raising concerns on the Russia-led efforts for talks with the Taliban, External Affairs Ministry Spokesman Vikas Swarup noted that “We underlined that it is up to the government of Afghanistan to decide whom to engage in direct talks.”2

The two regional meetings (the first was held in December 2016) represent Russia’s first post-Soviet attempt to replay the Afghan game and that too in a big way. However, in contrast to the Soviet motivation of propping up the communist government of the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) against a growing insurgency in December 1979, the Russian interest in Afghanistan now is the prevention of the growth and influence of the Islamic State (IS), which, in turn, may have a negative fallout on the security of Central Asia. A further Russian motive in Afghanistan appears to be aimed at keeping the US out of the region.

This major shift in Russia’s Afghanistan policy came immediately after it expressed concerns about the possibility of Afghanistan turning into a safe sanctuary for the Islamic State militants fleeing from Iraq and Syria.3 Speaking at the ‘Heart of Asia’ conference held in Amritsar on December 5, 2016, Russia’s special envoy to Afghanistan, Zamir Kabulov, described the Islamic State as being more dangerous than the Taliban. And three days later, on December 8, 2016, the Russian Ambassador to Afghanistan stated that “Our concern is that Daesh not only threatens Afghanistan, but it is also a potent threat to Central Asia, Pakistan, China, Iran, India and even Russia. We have ties with the Taliban to ensure the security of our political offices, consulates and the security of central Asia.”4 

Incontrast, Ahmad Murid Partaw, former Afghan National Representative to US CENTCOM, asserted that the presence of the IS in Afghanistan has been overemphasized by Russia, China and Iran as a pretext not only to intervene in the country’s affairs but also to counter the growing influence of the US in the region. He further stated that “the Af-Pak region is not a suitable ground for proliferation of such rejectionist beliefs enforced by IS and its supporters. This region has been influenced by the Deobandi school of Islam rather than Takfiri version.”5

During the latter half of the 1990s, Russia accused the Taliban of training Chechen rebels and fomenting Central Asian radical Islamic networks. As a result, Russia, in collaboration with Iran and India, supported the Northern Alliance against the Taliban regime. Today, Russia no longer views the Taliban as a major threat to its security and interests. There is even a suspicion among Afghan political leaders and officials that Russia is militarily helping the Taliban, with parliamentarians alleging in the upper house that Russia is supplying arms to the Taliban. However, Russian officials have dismissed such Afghan claims and suspicions. They have said that “We have never ever provided any kind of assistance to Taliban. Instead, Russia is assisting the Afghan government and has provided some light weapons on grant basis to its forces and is running programs to train Afghan police and military personnel in Russian institutions.”6

For its part, the Taliban has begun to respond favourably to Moscow’s outreach. Syed Muhammad Akbar Agha, a former Taliban commander who lives in Kabul and still espouses Islamic rule in Afghanistan, said in an interview to Komsomolskaya Pravda that “We are ready to shake hands with Russia in order to rid ourselves of the scourge of America.” He further noted that “history has proven that we are closer to Russia and the former Soviet republics than to the West.”7

It seems clear that Russia and the Taliban share common concerns about both the Islamic State and the continued US presence in Afghanistan. Such thinking is also shared by China and Iran and consequently Russia, China, Pakistan and Iran are pursuing a policy towards Afghanistan that is very different from that of India.

Meanwhile the Afghan government continues to face a host of security challenges posed by the Taliban forces. As recently as January 10, 2017, the Taliban claimed responsibility for a suicide attack in Kabul that killed more than 30 people and wounded some 70 others including the ambassador of the United Arab Emirates to Afghanistan and the governor of Kandahar province. One analyst even asserts that “the Taliban isn’t interested in peace and security. The jihadist group wants to win the Afghan war and it is using negotiations with regional and international powers to improve its standing.”8

Therefore, to expect that the Taliban would give up its terrorist activities is highly unlikely, which means that Russia will not be able to bring about a reconciliation between Kabul and the Taliban. In addition, Russia also has to contend with the view of the Afghan government, which was articulated by its representative Mohammad Ashraf Haidari at the February 15 meeting in Moscow. Haidari emphasized that the National Unity Government (NUG) is the only legitimate government representing all Afghans. And as for the role of the Taliban in the peace process, he stated that “Taliban lack the national and moral legitimacy to represent the Afghan people, who reject terrorism perpetrated by the Taliban and their foreign terrorist allied networks in the name of Islam—a religion of peace, tolerance, and co-existence.”9

Russia is not only taking a relatively benign view of the Taliban but it is also cosying  up to Pakistan, the Taliban’s sponsor. Russia’s decision to send troops to Pakistan for a joint military exercise in September 2016 demonstrated this, especially as it came in the wake of the terrorist attack in Uri carried out by the Pakistan-based and-backed jihadi group Jaish-e-Mohammed. Russia justified its military overture to Pakistan by saying that military cooperation was aimed at fighting against the Islamic State. Kabulov argued that “We understand all concerns of India about your western neighbour…But we cannot combat (terrorism) efficiently and productively and eliminate (it) without the cooperation of Pakistan. We need their cooperation and they should realise their importance and responsibility.”10

Clearly, Moscow’s decision to side with the Taliban and Islamabad has fundamentally changed the peace building efforts in Afghanistan. New Delhi and Kabul, on the other hand, still consider the Taliban and its Pakistani sponsor as the main threats to peace and stability in Afghanistan. India is also against the incorporation of the Taliban into the Afghan government so long as it does not renounce terrorism. For their part, Afghan analysts and lawmakers suggest that the regional countries, particularly Pakistan, have never been honest in fighting terrorism.11 In addition, they allege that the International Community has never pressed Pakistan to wipe terrorists out from its soil.12

Given all this, there is little or no prospect of Russia becoming a successful anchor of peace in Afghanistan. Further, the memory of the Soviet invasion is still fresh in the Afghan mind. And Russia has little chance of succeeding so long as the United States maintains troops in Afghanistan. Russia needs to be mindful of the fact that the rise of the Islamic State in Afghanistan can be countered only through close cooperation with Afghanistan’s National Unity Government and the Afghan National Security Forces. Its efforts to differentiate between the Islamic State and Taliban are also a mistake given that both groups share a similar ideology, albeitwith slight variations. Engaging the Taliban for the sake of fighting the Islamic State is likely to further alienate Afghanistan’s National Unity Government as well as other stake holders in the Afghan peace process. That, in turn, would only aggravate the ongoing conflict in Afghanistan.

Views expressed are of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the IDSA or of the Government of India. Originally published by Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (www.idsa.in) at http://idsa.in/idsacomments/russia-policy-shift-towards-taliban-and-pakistan_mmeher_010317

• 1. “General sees Russian meddling in Afghanistan, need for more troops to fight Taliban,” Washington Times, February 9, 2017

• 2. “Moscow Six-Party Talks on Afghanistan Commit to ‘Red lines’ on Taliban Engagement,” The Wire, February 16, 2017

• 3. “Rise of ISIS in Afghanistan is threat to Russia – Moscow,” September 13, 2016

• 4. Shabir Ahmadi, “Envoy Confirms Russia Has Relations With Taliban,” December 8, 2016

• 5. Ahmad Murid Partaw, “The Illusion of the Islamic State in Afghanistan,”  Foreign Policy Journal, February 10, 2017

• 6. “Russia strongly supports China-Pakistan economic corridor as it is crucial for Pakistan’s economy, regional connectivity: Russian envoy,” December 16, 2016

• 7. “The Taliban Wants Closer Ties With Moscow to Rid Afghanistan of ‘U.S. Scourge’,” Moscow Times, February 13, 2017

• 8. Thomas Joscelyn, “Russia’s new favorite jihadis: The Taliban,” Long War Journal, January 4, 2017

• 9. “At Moscow meeting, Afghanistan says Taliban shouldn’t be supported,” February 16, 2017

• 10. Devirupa Mitra, “Pakistan Critical to Defeating ISIS, Says Russian Special Rep to Afghanistan,” The Wire, December 5, 2016

• 11. Suraya Raiszada, “Regional Meeting On Afghanistan To Be Held In Near Future, UN,” February 11, 2017

• 12. Rafi Sidiqi, “International Community Not Committed to Afghanistan in Fight Against Terrorism: Analysts,” February 10, 2017

TOPICS:AfghanistanCentral AsiaForeign PolicyPakistanRussiaTalibanTerrorism

TRERRORISM : TERRORISM IN SOUTH ASIA : THE TALIBAN

SOURCE:

http://www.cfr.org/terrorist-organizations-and-networks/taliban/p35985?cid=marketing_use-taliban_infoguide-012115&cid=nlc-dailybrief-daily_news_brief--link19-20160405&sp_mid=51080421&sp_rid=YmN2YXN1bmRocmFAaG90bWFpbC5jb20S1#!/p35985?cid=nlc-dailybrief-daily_news_brief--link19-20160405&sp_mid=51080421&sp_rid=YmN2YXN1bmRocmFAaG90bWFpbC5jb20S1



                           THE  TALIBAN 

 

 

 

 

A CFR InfoGuide Presentation

The Taliban has outlasted the world’s most potent military forces and its two main factions now challenge the governments of Afghanistan and Pakistan. As U.S. troops draw down, the next phase of conflict will have consequences that extend far beyond the region.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Taliban was toppled in Afghanistan in 2001 for harboring al-Qaeda, but it has not been defeated. With an estimated core of up to sixty thousand fighters, the Taliban remains the most vigorous insurgent group in Afghanistan and holds sway over civilians near its strongholds in the country’s south and east. It has also metastasized in neighboring Pakistan, where thousands of fighters in the country’s western tribal areas wage war against the government. Now, as the international combat mission in Afghanistan closes, the Taliban threatens to destabilize the region, harbor terrorist groups with global ambitions, and set back human rights and economic development in the areas where it prevails.




Though the Taliban appears unlikely to dismantle the Afghan government and revive its emirate, it poses the most serious challenge to Kabul’s authority even as the United States winds down the longest war in its history and NATO scales back its largest-ever deployment outside of Europe. The insurgents’ resilience calls into question a state-building project that has cost its international backers hundreds of billions of dollars.




The U.S.-led military coalition has suffered nearly 3,500 dead and more than ten thousand wounded. Since 2001, at least twenty-one thousand Afghan civilians have been killed in conflict, and three million people have been displaced, according to the UN refugee agency. Afghan troops and police are dying at their highest rates ever.

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The drawdown of international forces from Afghanistan also raises questions about Pakistan’s strategy in South Asia and its leverage over the Afghan Taliban. The insurgents could not have thrived without sanctuary in Pakistan, whose main intelligence service, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) directorate, cultivated them in the 1990s and maintained ties to them after 2001 (PDF). Pakistan has long sought what its military doctrines call strategic depth: an amicable regime in Kabul, to avoid being encircled by its chief rival, India, to the east, and a pro-India Afghanistan to the west.


Along with several foreign militant groups, Pakistani Taliban factions thrived in the sanctuaries along the frontier that the Pakistani military had set aside for the Afghan Taliban. But Pakistan does not control the Islamist militancy it helped enable, and its military is now fighting a movement whose primary aim differs from that of the Afghan Taliban. The Pakistani Taliban has declared Islamabad apostate for aligning itself with post-9/11 U.S. foreign policy and seeks revolution in Pakistan. Under the umbrella Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP, or Taliban Movement of Pakistan), these militants have attacked Pakistani security forces and civilians nationwide.


Thousands of Sunni Islamic militants have established rudimentary bases along the Afghan-Pakistani border. There, they harbor al-Qaeda and affiliated jihadi groups and provide staging grounds for cross-border attacks against international troops and Afghan security forces. The India-oriented terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba, which launched the 2008 attack on the Taj Mahal hotel in Mumbai and is believed to have ties to the ISI, has found refuge there, as has the anti-Shia group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi. These groups are suspected by Western intelligence and Afghan officials of carrying out attacks in Afghanistan, including on U.S. and Indian targets.


In June 2013, Afghan forces assumed responsibility from the international coalition for providing security, a prerequisite for the drawdown of tens of thousands of U.S.-led troops. Also in 2014, a presidential election brought the country’s first peaceful and democratic, if flawed, transfer of power. These developments might undercut the Taliban's claim to mount the preeminent resistance to foreign occuption, but the Taliban justifies the continuation of its armed campaign by asserting the government is illegitimate and un-Islamic, a puppet of the West.


Meanwhile, the persistence of ineffective, corrupt, and often-mistrusted state institutions in Afghanistan and Pakistan, combined with mutual mistrust between the two countries, could give Taliban guerrillas an outsized impact on both countries' security, development, and democratization after the drawdown

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We believe the war in Afghanistan will come to an end when all foreign invaders pull out of Afghanistan and a holy Islamic and independent regime prevails here.

The Afghan Taliban’s 2014 Eid al-Fitr Communiqué

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                      The Rise of the Islamic Emirate

 

 

 

 

Anarchy prevailed in Afghanistan in 1994. The Soviet Union's Red Army had pulled out five years prior, and international support for the anti-Soviet jihad, led by U.S. and Saudi intelligence operatives, waned soon after. Afghanistan, awash in arms, had neither a functioning government nor a productive economy. In the post-Soviet power vacuum, mujahadeen, warlords who had made common cause against Soviet forces, jockeyed for power and spoils, and the government led by the communist People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan collapsed in 1992. Civil war engulfed Afghanistan, leaving appalling carnage but no clear victor.


A small clerical movement emerged to protect residents from the banditry and extortion that had become routine. These vigilantes in western Kandahar called themselves the Taliban, Pashto for “seekers of knowledge.” Their ranks were soon reinforced by thousands of their co-ethnics, Pashtuns educated in Deobandi madrassas, or seminaries, along Pakistan’s western frontier. These madrassas proliferated under President Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq (1977–88) and served some of the millions of Afghan refugees who had been displaced by more than a decade of unrest. They were sponsored by the religious party Jamiat Ulema-e-Islami (JUI), which mobilized its students to take up arms with the Taliban.


The Taliban was welcomed by a war-weary public as it expanded out from Kandahar. The movement established order on the basis of Hanafi Islamic jurisprudence influenced by Pashtun custom, which meshed with the rural mores of southern Afghanistan.


Pakistan assumed a crucial role in cultivating the Taliban. Under the command of Mullah Mohammad Omar, an Afghan ethnic Pashtun who had served as a junior mujahadeen commander during the anti-Soviet jihad, the Taliban swept through southern Afghanistan in 1994. The ISI shifted its support from the major mujahadeen party it had bet on to Mullah Omar's group. Pakistan believed that with ideological and material means of persuasion, including funds and arms, it could manipulate Taliban clerics and thus ensure a stable and acquiescent Afghanistan, as well as secure routes to open trade to the newly independent Central Asian states, writes journalist Ahmed Rashid.


Another outside force of looming importance for Afghanistan was al-Qaeda. Osama bin Laden, the exiled Saudi who had bankrolled and facilitated fighters known as the Afghan Arabs during the anti-Soviet fight, was expelled from Sudan in 1996. He returned to Afghanistan seeking a sanctuary from which he could build up his terrorist group. Mullah Omar protected bin Laden even as the al-Qaeda leader’s international fugitive status grew over the late 1990s. Bin Laden provided resources and technical capacities to the Taliban, and Mullah Omar was won over by his claim to be a righteous mujahid and revolutionary icon, according to researchers who study the Taliban. Some analysts also attribute Mullah Omar's offer of refuge to bin Laden, despite an international bounty, to the obligation under pashtunwali (PDF), the pre-Islamic tribal code, to provide guests unconditional hospitality. (Many members of the Taliban later faulted Mullah Omar’s protection of bin Laden for the U.S.-led invasion that toppled their state.)


Pakistan's ISI likely approved of or facilitated bin Laden’s return to Afghanistan, the congressionally mandated 9/11 Commission found, since some of its Islamist militant proxies who were oriented toward jihad in India-administered Kashmir trained in bin Laden’s camps in Afghanistan.


Once the Taliban captured Kabul in 1996, it declared Afghanistan an Islamic emirate and Mullah Omar its head of state and installed clerics to helm national institutions. With an emphasis on policing morality, the Taliban established the Department for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, which attempted to enforce its puritanical interpretation of sharia. Police beat Afghans who defied the Taliban’s edicts and mores, including those mandating full beards for men and head-to-toe burqas for women. The Taliban shuttered girls’ schools and forbade women from working, so many women widowed during the anti-Soviet jihad were forced to beg in the streets and many schools were closed for lack of teachers.


By 1998, the Taliban had come to control 90 percent of the country. After nearly two decades of conflict, resources were scarce and Afghanistan remained at the lowest rungs of global human development rankings. Under protocol with the Taliban, the United Nations ran a country-wide humanitarian program in Afghanistan, but came at loggerheads with the regime over restrictions it imposed in the name of Islamization. Taliban-governed Afghanistan became an international pariah for its human rights abuses and refusal to surrender bin Laden and other members of al-Qaeda on international watch lists.


The Taliban’s severe strictures were alien to many Afghans, and after the Taliban captured Kabul, the Northern Alliance became Afghanistan's main military and political opposition. The alliance, led by Ahmed Shah Massoud, drew its support mainly from the ethnic Tajik, Uzbek, and Hazara communities. Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates were the only states to recognize the Taliban regime, and the Northern Alliance held Afghanistan's seat at the United Nations. 


Pressed into a small corner of northern and northeastern Afghanistan, Massoud’s alliance struggled to hold out against the Taliban from 1998 to 2001. Assisting their Taliban protectors, al-Qaeda agents assassinated Massoud two days before the 9/11 attacks that would quickly end the Taliban’s control of Afghanistan.